


No Quarter

by Shachaai



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: F/F, F/M, Fluff and Smut, Historical, M/M, Multi, Nationverse, but Nationverse if both regular and nyos existed in the same universe
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-31
Updated: 2019-07-31
Packaged: 2020-07-25 22:03:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,739
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20033059
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shachaai/pseuds/Shachaai
Summary: A bet tumbles the four of them into bed. (They would've done it evenwithoutthe bet.)





	No Quarter

**Author's Note:**

> Crossposted from my tumblr.
> 
> The Portugals are Gabriel and Glória, and the Englands are Arthur and Elaine. This is not a fic focused on history, but the time period I had in mind writing it is the mid-to-late 1830s. Evening dresses have low necklines, hoops and poofy balloon sleeves. Trousers are tight. Everyone wears some kind of corset.

Arthur should have been more suspicious when Glória rose from the dining table and suggested that she and Elaine ‘withdraw and leave the gentlemen to their drinks.’ The (thoughtlessly) impolite casualness of Glória assuming the hostess’ role at an English table had overridden the warning signals that _ should _ have started showing in Arthur’s mind the moment _ either _ representative of Portugal suggested moving away from decent alcohol and company to flirt with - but even Elaine’s raised eyebrow hadn’t been able to overcome the distraction that had been Gabriel’s hand lazily squeezing Arthur’s thigh under the table, especially since it had been there scattering Arthur’s wits to the four winds since the servants had cleared away the remains of dessert.

As it is, with the women gone, the drinks poured, and Arthur pulled in a tangle of sticky limbs onto Gabriel’s lap, it takes an _ appallingly _ long time for the blare of _ something is odd here _ to flare through his thoughts. Cravat yanked from his throat and mouth already bitten red, Arthur pulls back from the wet and greedy lap of Gabriel’s tongue, back from kisses thick and sweet with the port traded between their mouths, and rests his weight entirely in the warm hands rather possessively cupping his arse so he can look at Gabriel directly - and _ extremely suspiciously - _ in the eye.

“…_Why _ did your other half just withdraw from my dining room?”

Gabriel smiles with a wince - Arthur has grasped _ something _ here. “I think perhaps she realised where my hand was after the trifle?”

“Glória has happily sat by and watched whilst your hand was in places a _ lot _ more risqué than it was after tonight’s trifle.” Glória has just as happily _ joined in _ with putting hands in places a lot more risqué than on Arthur and Elaine’s clothéd legs on nearly every occasion Arthur can immediately think of, so Gabriel’s excuse definitely holds no water. “She watched you have Elaine on the _ lawn _ last time you were both here, and even saved you both some cake. She _ likes _ watching - and particularly when she has company of her own to debauch _ whilst _ she’s watching.” Arthur levels Gabriel another unimpressed look when the Portuguese Nation attempts to distract him by cupping his arse through his trousers. “What are you both up to, you cads?”

“Meu _ coração_, I could be insulted -” Arthur snorts, and Gabriel gives up trying. “…There may have been a bet made about which of us provides a better distraction.”

“Right,” says Arthur. “For what?”

“…Ah…” Gabriel wriggles a little bit, unintentionally pushing himself up against Arthur’s hips. (At least _ neither _ of them are unaffected by this little game of ‘distraction.’) “Gloating rights, I think you call it? Mostly?”

_ “‘Mostly’? _ ”

“And… some other… small tokens and favours.” Gabriel’s hazel eyes are sliding sideways, away from the increasing _ flatness _ of Arthur’s gaze. “Nothing that you or Elaine wouldn’t gamble away in a game of cards.”

Elaine had once - deliberately! - gambled _ Arthur _ away in a game of cards because she claimed he hadn’t been laid enough recently.

“Right,” says Arthur again, and begins clambering off of Gabriel’s lap, much to the other’s evident pouting distress. “We’re going to go find your rakehell other half, and then I’m going to strangle both of you.”

Gabriel tries a valiant: “We could finish what we’ve started _ before _ the strangling -” Arthur glowers at him pointedly, sweeping up their crumpled cravats from the floor and hanging it about his neck. “Or it is up to you, yes.”

The withdrawing room is only a few doors further down the corridor. Arthur leads the way there with Gabriel trailing behind him, Gabriel earning himself a little redemption by remembering to grab the tray of port and glasses on the way out.

The door is firmly closed but not locked, so when Arthur pushes down on the handle he can easily step inside - and stop dead two paces in. He is not particularly _ surprised _ at the chaos around him - caused by two sets of voluminous dresses and their corresponding hoops, ribbons and shawls being scattered every way on the floor and furniture -, but he is also not entirely willing to put a foot out of place in a suddenly very feminine domain and accidentally twist his ankle over a frippery.

Gabriel and his tray bump up against Arthur’s back in a rattle, at which point he takes note of the state of the drawing room and the women within it and makes a low and terribly Portuguese oath that makes Arthur’s lips twitch.

_ Someone _ has very clearly just lost their bet.

It is Gabriel’s swearing that catches Glória’s attention, glancing over at the two men at the door. Apart from her missing outer layers and corset, the high flush in her cheeks and the particularly wicked sparkle in her eyes, the Portuguese woman looks remarkably composed, busy rifling through the drawers of a writing desk one-handed. She still has her chemise and shoes on, stockings and bloomers firmly laced - all so pale in juxtaposition to her tanned skin -, and the scarlet rose tucked into her bun is only _ just _ beginning to slip out of her hair.

Elaine, in contrast, is a wreck on one of the couches, her bare knees drawn up onto the cushions and her arms folded over the couch’s back as her chest heaves like a stormy sea with fast, high, hiccuping breaths. Her wardrobe is now sans _ everything _save her corset and chemise - and even the chemise has been rucked up and pushed down, baring the top of her shuddering breasts and the slick shine of moisture slowly sliding down the inside of her thighs. Even Elaine’s hair hasn’t remained unscathed - and she can get so _ pedantic _ about her hair -, brought down in a golden mess about her pearl earrings, clinging with sweat to her cheeks and breasts and throat.

Arthur takes out his fob watch from his pocket to examine it. “…Twenty-two minutes, really?”

Elaine’s answering snap from the couch is immediate, high, breathless and annoyed. “Because my stamina is _ obviously _ what you should be criticising here!”

“There, there, querida,” Glória soothes, busy digging urgently through another desk-drawer and putting paper all over the place, “you know how he gets when he feels left out, so save your breath.” Her honey gaze has an _ edge _ to it when she looks back at Arthur - no doubt caused by Elaine nearly hyperventilating on the couch. If Elaine is having trouble breathing, the sensible thing to do would be to remove her corset, unless - “Where _ do _ you keep your letter-opener?”

Ah.

“We have mail?” Gabriel asks, brow furrowed, and sets down his tray on a nearby side-table slightly harder than necessary when Glória makes a sound at him like a disgusted cat. _ “Quê? _ ”

“No need,” says Arthur, switching his fob watch for the pocket knife he keeps slipped inside his jacket and moving towards his other half on the couch.

“And I was _ just _ complimenting Elaine for not taking weapons to dinner.” Some of the tenseness drops from Glória’s shoulders, and she takes the other side of Elaine to Arthur on the couch, gently drawing the still panting English woman into her arms so Arthur has access to Elaine’s back - and the fiercely knotted laces of Elaine’s corset down Elaine’s spine. Arthur begins cutting the laces immediately, his knife sawing through the criss-crossed bars of a gaol made of silk and bone.

Though they have slim waists already, both Elaine _ and _ Arthur wear their corsets and waistcoats a little tighter than is strictly necessary. The current punishing grip of Elaine’s corset, however, is _ far _ too tight, crushing her ribs and lungs, the laces pulled on so hard to achieve it that they have _ snapped off _ immediately below their knot, making them impossible to undo.

Glória’s curiously _ bloodless _ hand on Elaine’s nape says a lot for how Elaine’s corset ended up in such a state, white lines impressed deeply across her fingers and palm. “You’ve spoilt all her hard work.”

“My apologies,” says Arthur, still cutting the well and truly ruined corset laces. Each cut he makes gives Elaine a little more room to breathe, his other half sagging into Glória’s chest with a deep, grateful sigh. A lovely mess, the both of them. “I can see how _ hard _ you’ve both been working.” The final piece cut, Arthur abruptly pulls off Elaine’s corset, tossing it to the side for Gabriel to catch (with some bewilderment). The grooves caused by laces and bones are impressed in Elaine’s chemise; heaven knows what her little _ session _ with Glória has done to her _ skin. _ “Maybe next time you should check you have a knife nearby _ before _ you erotically asphyxiate someone with their own corset? It does stop being fun after you’ve orgasmed.”

“Someone who missed the play does not get to criticise the performance.” Glória sniffs at him, but rubs a grateful hand over the top of Arthur’s head when he bows his head to kiss Elaine’s shoulder in quiet reassurance.

Gabriel, however, does not get such gentle treatment when he comes over to the couch and drops to his knees beside it, placing a comforting hand on Elaine’s thigh as the English woman’s breathing finally begins to properly steady out.

Glória plants her _ foot _ in his stomach. “_You _ may get your own Inglaterra; this one is mine.”

Gabriel merely curves over it, idly stroking over Elaine’s bare knee with the pad of his thumb as he looks up at her. “This one looks a little broken already.”

“_This one _ is not blind, deaf and dumb,” Elaine snaps between them all, pushing herself a hand’s breadth away from Glória in her indignation and ignoring the other woman’s _ moue _ of discontent, “and is getting rather tired of the three idiots who keep talking about her as if she _ is. _ ”

“Desculpa.” Gabriel’s smile is a slow, lazy thing, like a cat dozing in a sunbeam that has just watched its favourite dinner get put out and knows that the food will be waiting as soon as its hunger develops enough to eat it. “Perhaps I should make my part of it up to you?”

“What world do you think this is,” Elaine asks him, her eyebrow hiking so high Arthur catches Glória’s eye above it and lets the shared amusement bubble in his belly, “to let the miscreant decree his own punishment?”

Gabriel does his very best to look charming. “A one in which even a miscreant can dream. Ah,” he looks to Glória, “how is it they phrase it in English, _ não só de pão viverá o homem_?”

“Man cannot live by bread alone,” says Arthur, and lets some of his mirth crook up the corners of his mouth as he settles more closely behind Elaine, letting his temple bump comfortably against his other half’s head as he studies Gabriel on the floor. “But I believe you’ve already had your fill of many things other than _ bread _ this evening. Good food, fine wines, your _ hosts…_”

“You cannot tell a soul not to _ dream_, Arthur.” Elaine lets her head rest against Arthur’s in turn, one half echoing to another. Arthur can feel the spark of it sweep through his blood, a not-there sound heard more in the heart than the head, all the voices of all the English people that were ever theirs murmuring like the sound of the waves of the cold salt sea that had always wrapped around them. “But if he dubs fucking either of us an _ exercise in faith_, by all means dump him on the doorstep without his clothes on.”

Glória laughs, and Gabriel looks outraged at all of them. “Why am _ I _ the only one marked for indignity? _ She,_” a wounded glance at Glória, “is as much to blame as me.”

“Come, anjinho,” Glória entreats, letting her foot slide from her other half’s lap so she can lean conspiratorially towards him, “we cannot have them condemn _ all _ of Portugal.”

Gabriel makes a face up at her, reaching up to tuck back some of the falling curls of Glória’s hair. “You tell them not to do something, and they do it just to prove they can.”

Arthur turns his mouth against Elaine’s ear, murmuring: “I feel maligned. Do you feel maligned?”

Elaine’s lips twitch upwards, right as Glória announces: “I am _ far _ too pretty to be naked on a doorstep.”

“Indeed,” Arthur murmurs again, softer than before, “someone might think we were running a brothel.”

Elaine puts her elbow into Arthur’s ribs. “Unfortunately,” she says out-loud to both Portugals, “in this world of ours a man’s reputation is much easier to mend than a woman’s. If we were to put _ Glória _ out without her clothing on the streets, she could never go out in public again. _ You, _ on the other hand…” She glances at Gabriel.

“Provided he appeared appropriately penitent for the next month, before the season was out he would have at least four proposals of marriage.” Arthur considers his own words for a moment, and then casually leans over the couch to cast his eyes over the bulge in his fellow Nation’s trousers that he had been quite happily straddling earlier in the dining room. Despite events, Gabriel is still half-hard - beautiful women and masochism have always done _ something _ for him. “Perhaps twice that, provided there are a few appreciative young ladies about and it’s not winter.”

Glória laughs again, louder than before, and it shakes the rose out of her hair at last onto Gabriel’s lap. He sets it aside, clearly sulking now, and pushes himself up onto his knees, his elbows on Glória and Elaine’s laps and his gaze fixed up at Arthur and Elaine, mildly accusatory. “Could you be so cruel?”

“Dear heart,” Elaine begins, smiling as she lays her fingers against Gabriel’s throat.

“You have an over-fondness for rhetorical questions,” Arthur finishes - though that is not, perhaps, what his other half had been wishing to say, as her elbow finds his ribcage again.

The kiss Elaine bestows upon Gabriel is _ much _ more gentle, her hand tipping his jaw so she can slide their mouths together with inviting ease. Gabriel makes the most beautiful little pleased sound in the back of his throat, putting himself entirely in Elaine’s hands and smoothing his palm up from her knee to rub over the muscles of her thigh. His hand bumps against Arthur’s, and Arthur fits his hand over Gabriel’s hand, coaxing both higher to slip under the high, high hem of Elaine’s chemise.

Glória watches them with open interest, her eyes very dark and her lashes lowering thoughtfully. Arthur flickers her a glance over the tops of their companions’ heads - and shamelessly smiles her the kind of crooked smile that usually has Glória hooking her fingers under his collar to pull him close and put him where she wants him. The flash of wet pink tongue in Gabriel and Elaine’s kiss distracts him however, and Arthur finds himself slowly grinding against his other half’s back in arousal that is as heady as it is sudden. He scrapes back Elaine’s hair with his fingers, reapplying his mouth to the bared curve of her shoulder, teeth and tongue, in a way he knows makes both of them flushed and wet.

“…Perhaps,” Glória offers, her voice the same kind of intoxicating tawny darkness as her eyes, and they all pause to look at her, “we should take this upstairs. Beds are larger. And more comfortable.”

“…My room,” says Elaine, still absently stroking Gabriel’s throat and jaw and cheek with her fingertips like she is petting a spoilt cat.

Arthur demurs. “What’s wrong with _ my _ room?” His room and bed is of the same size and style as his other half’s.

“My room is more suitable for a lady’s toilette afterwards,” says Elaine - _ unfortunately _ at the same time as Gloria says:

“Her toys are nicer than yours.”

Arthur huffs, immediately put-out and looking to Gabriel for either confirmation or denial of at least _ Glória’s _ assertion, only to find the useless lump is laughing at him already, resting his forehead into Elaine’s uncorseted chest and letting both women pet through his tangled hair.

“This one abstains from the vote, I think,” Elaine tells Arthur over her shoulder, and the bright in the green of her gaze is laughing at him. “Majority rules in my favour.”

Arthur will find some way to make up for this later. “We’re bringing the port.”


End file.
